I'm familiar with what Tesla says they will do, I get the press releases as soon as they are online. Saying and doing are two different things and so far they have a track record of overpromising and underdelivering, it just happens to be that their missing the mark has still been damned impressive.

The report uses the Nissan Leaf as a base case, which is about 20% more efficient than Model S, and in most of the Midwest, driving a Leaf equates to the equivalent greenhouse emissions of a 31-40mpg car. The 740i is a ~25 mpg car driven reasonably. If you live on the coasts, especially the west coast, it's not even close

Thanks for the constructive discussion and providing links. Interesting read.
Although I still can't see how it's not much better than a 740i in emissions...

From the article:
"Nearly half of Americans (45%) live in the “best” regions where EVs produce lower global warming emissions than even the most fuel-efficient gasoline hybrids on the market today (greater than 50 mpg).
Another third (38%) live in “better” areas where EVs produce emissions comparable to the best gasoline hybrid vehicles (41 – 50 mpg).
A minority (17%) reside in “good” regions where emissions from EVs are comparable to the most fuel-efficient non-hybrid gasoline vehicles (31 – 40 mpg)."

Maybe for 17% of the US population?
I could only wish my M3 did even 31 mpg, I've tried carefully driving on the freeway for this to no avail...
How many high-performance vehicles have such good gas mileage?

Another thing I find fascinating is that once electrics are more mainstream, the issue of cleaning up emissions would be in changing centralized power generation to be cleaner, not in a ton of consumers chaning their personal transportation. In my mind I find this easier to achieve. Electricity can come from so many sources, gasoline is just gasoline.

AND even if you left the "bad" electric plants, at least we wouldn't have the exhausts polluting densely populated areas, just a few plants polluting particular areas here and there. In the end it'd probably screw us anyways, but in the short term we'd probably be a bit healthier.

Who knows, I'm just happy there's finally an electric car that doesn't suck.

I'm a hard core car guy but I'm frankly excited about the Tesla given the technology involved.

But as a CA resident, I gotta say this... something about this picture pisses me off to no end because in my mind, I only see the Federal and State subsidies that I helped fund to put these cars in this picture. Pissses me off.